Scipio frowned at him and crossed her arms distractingly again. "Why? I just said I didn't wanna get all my clothes destroyed while I was fighting."
"Well, I think we can probably just keep it at a lower level of fighting so that doesn't happen," Tim said, maintaining eye contact. "And I think, uh, it'd be less distracting for me too, which would help."
"Oh." She thought about it for a few seconds. "Is it… Do you need to…" She made the universal gesture for masturbating with one hand and pointed towards the other end of the platform with the thumb of her other hand. "I can go over there and wait if you wanna—"
"No, that's… That's not really what… Is it really that much to ask?" Tim finally said. I give up. I can't… She's just too weird. In what world is "Can you put on some clothes?" responded to with "Do you want me to give you some privacy so you can masturbate?" is what I'd usually be wondering, but apparently that's the world I'm in, so…
She shrugged. "Okay, but we'll have to be careful. I gave a lot of my clothes away a few days ago and didn't get more." She pulled a pair of black, cloth pants out of the air next to her and started sliding them on.
"Are you always this weird?" Tim asked, unable to stop himself. And where's she getting these clothes from?
"Huh? Weird?" Scipio paused with a white shirt held in both hands and a quizzical look on her face. She put the shirt on and then rubbed her forehead. "Uh… Weird…" She shrugged again, but her expression had changed to a frown. "I figured since we're all not human I can just be me. Do what I want. It's fun being able to relax and not worry about whether I'm breaking some law or doing something that'd make the empress mad."
"You really put that much effort into it normally?" I can't imagine her not being weird now. And now I'm feeling like it'd definitely be worse if anyone found out that I'm not actually what my character model looks like.
"Urgh, it's so fucking annoying," she grumbled. She waved her hand and started walking towards the far end of the platform. "Let's talk while we fight. I don't wanna fight here in case the actual human comes down. Might accidentally kill her. That'd be bad."
"Uh, okay," Tim said as he followed after her.
"Yeah, I spend a lot of time on it," she said over her shoulder. "I can't even walk around in my home city without wearing something over my face or people lose their fucking minds. Have to remember to always walk on the ground, can't move all the time when I want to, can't really use any of my skills if I don't wanna cause problems…" She trailed off for a moment. "Huh. Didn't really think about it like this before, but being human's really confining."
"Confining," he repeated.
"I hate being confined," she said, coming to an abrupt stop. "Okay, here's probably far enough away." She turned around and moved one bared foot slightly behind herself. "Let's go. Show me how strong you are."
Sounds like there's more to this than just being weird. He took up a relaxed stance. And speaking of weird, it feels weird to be fighting her now so soon after… He took a deep breath.
"When you're ready, Storm," Scipio said. She stood a couple steps away in a completely relaxed stance. "Remember, careful with the clothes."
He took another deep breath.
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"Not bad," Scipio said. She held out a hand again to help him up. "Can't believe you actually hit me that one time. Not many people can say that."
Tim took the hand and was once more yanked smoothly to his feet. If he had to pick, he'd prefer sparring with Scipio over Ir'alith. Whereas the latter was decidedly of the belief that being struck after making a mistake was its own method of teaching, his latest training partner matched his pace, rarely striking with much force, and was usually there to offer a hand when he got knocked down. Plus she actually seems like she's really knowledgeable about fighting as a human. And she doesn't look like she could bite me in half.
"Only once though," he said, feeling a little depressed when he recalled his subsequent attempts. The second time he'd tried using Bright Field, she was standing far in the distance by the time the flash ended. It was something he'd never considered due to the limitations of the game's stats, but if he was fighting someone who was fast enough, they could simply pick a direction and go, even while blinded, and he'd never be able to stop them. He'd tried a third time, adding a Thorn Snare and a well-placed Wall to see whether that would work, but she'd just jumped straight into the air on that occasion, landing several seconds later wearing a smug grin.
"Storm, I've fought thousands of battles," Scipio said seriously. "I've fought battles that never even fucking happened. I've killed deities. The number of people who hit me for any reason isn't very many. That's something you can feel really fucking proud of. It's a simple trick though, and expecting it to ever work a second time's sort of…insulting," she finished with a disapproving expression.
"Uh…" If she puts it like that, I suppose it's a little greedy to try it more than once. "Yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to insult you," he said.
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"You can make it up to me sometime," she said. "Looks like meditation's over though, so someone's about to get a great fight."
"Drake Storm, I would continue our training from earlier," Ir'alith announced from behind him.
Tim barely restrained a groan as he turned around.
"Fuck," Scipio muttered.
"You have much to learn and little time in which to learn it," Ir'alith continued. "You are a friend to Carl, and I desire for you to survive and return to your world."
That's…sort of touching. Carl, maybe I was a little hard on her to start. Sure, she looks like she could bite me in half, and she's a shapeshifting alien-demon, but she's really got a heart of gold whenever you get brought up. "Alright, what did you have in mind?"
Ir'alith's closed her eyes for a short while. Her tail slowly retracted, and she grew broader at the shoulders, shrinking slightly overall, and changing in other places. "I will battle you with a form that matches your own so that you can more easily see your mistakes," she said in a body that was a mirror image of his from the neck down, save for being blue and lacking any form of genitalia.
"Not quite the same without the cock," Scipio quipped.
"I—"
"It's a joke, it's a joke," Scipio quickly interrupted when the taller woman turned towards her with a glare.
"Ah. I apologize for ruining your joke, Vol," Ir'alith said after a moment. She looked back to Tim. "I have considered your technique from our time sparring earlier. You fight roughly, as a human would, revealing your attack with your eyes before taking action. To correct this, the fastest method would be…"
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"Do not laugh, Vol. He tries as best he can."
"But he fell off again!"
Tim floated slowly up over the side of the platform. Or so he assumed. How the fuck does putting a magical blindfold on help me fight better? If it works though…
"Again, Drake Storm. Walk to me. Follow my voice. Feel the motion of your body."
His foot touched down again on the edge of the platform, halfway off it. He felt a supporting force holding him in place while he got his balance, putting one foot in front of the other, and then it disappeared, leaving him to continue his attempt to walk in a straight line, blindfolded, on the edge of what might have been an infinite abyss.
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"Well done, Drake Storm," Ir'alith said. "You have improved. Now, see the results of your training."
The darkness that had shrouded his vision for however long disappeared, and he squinted, blinking rapidly as he adjusted to being able to see again. Why did I agree to that. There's no way…
"Vol, spar with him for a moment," Ir'alith said.
"Good, I was bored," Scipio said as she walked over from the other side of the platform. "You look the same," she said, giving him an appraising once-over that again lingered more on his lower half.
"Feels the same," Tim said. Is it supposed to feel different?
"Recall the feeling of moving without your sight," Ir'alith instructed from behind him. "The location of your muscles. The sense of how far your intent moved each one. Consider your intent to strike as that same intent. It does not require your eyes. It requires only the mind."
What the hell does that mean? He thought about it as he settled into his stance.
"When you're ready," Scipio said like usual.
He took in her posture. She was standing a little over two steps away with her arms at her sides, one foot slightly behind the other. She was wide open, but she could also kill him as easily as blinking. His thoughts shifted. Alright.
The location of my muscles. He remembered as best as he could the terrifying feeling of walking slowly while putting one foot in front of the other, then the sensation of falling and wondering whether anything would catch him.
Intent. He thought more about how his body had moved and how he'd eventually managed to take the last however many steps without falling off.
He looked deeper inside himself, coming to an awkward realization with inopportune timing. Regardless, he darted forward, doing his best not to think about it.
"Oh, hey, it worked," Vol said as she lazily deflected a punch with her forearm.
He followed up immediately with the sweep that he'd been intending on, diving in with a lunge to grab at her knee in an attempted takedown. His fingers grazed the side of her pants as she darted back and to the side impossibly fast.
"Yeah, it sort of worked somehow?" Scipio said, looking confused. "Weird. It's like—"
"I'm uh… I'll be right back," Tim called as he started jogging towards the stairs, having recently come to the unfortunate conclusion that what he really needed after the past two hours of low intensity training was a toilet.
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Tim returned to the fighting area a short while later feeling refreshed, in large part due to the ten-out-of-ten water he was sipping from a glass as he walked. Was getting a little dehydrated there for sure. Seems like I shouldn't really be sweating much though if I'm part dragon. Aren't dragons lizards? Lizards don't sweat, so why am… His thoughts were zapped into nothingness when he drew closer to the once-distant flashes of light farther down the platform, which revealed themselves to be Scipio shooting huge, blinding bolts of lightning out of her hand at circles of stone that appeared randomly in the air off the side of the platform.
"You have succeeded," Ir'alith said loudly. The targets stopped appearing, and Scipio lowered her arm. "Your control is improved."
"Still feels weird," the shorter woman said.
"What does?" Tim asked.
She turned to him with her brows drawn down and her lips pulled to one side as though she was struggling with a confusing thought. "Never really spent much time practicing using lightning like this. Wasn't ever something I needed. It's sort of like…" Her frown deepened. "Maybe… Like learning to give a high five, except you're doing it with blood that you shoot out of your hand instead of your actual hand?"
He grimaced as he tried to make sense of the analogy.
"I'm really bad at explaining things," Scipio said with a shrug.